Trip 5 of the season headed out to the Similan islands with Scott, Colin & Amanda looking after 9 divers and a couple of snorkellers all ready for 5 days and 5 nights on the SY Jaya! The liveaboard started at island 5 with a refresher for Jens and a check dive for everyone else, loads to see at Anita's Reef - massive puffer fish, big schools of snapper and lots of stingrays.All checked out and ready to go! Up to West of Eden, ribbon eels and peacock mantis shrimp aplenty, and then Turtle Rock to finish off the day. A great dive briefing from Colin put the pressure on the others to find turtles and sharks, it's called Turtle Rock because of the shape of the rock, not because of the marine life! The briefing must've been lucky, because we saw both during the dive, as well as a juvenile rock mover wrasse, very cute!
Day 2 of the trip started at Christmas Point, napoleon wrasse, white tip sharks, bait balls everywhere, very cool dive. Snorkelling in Donald Duck Bay next, lots of baby black tips, sharky day so far! Annette gave diving a try with a Resort Dive in the bay, big schools of fusiliers and some huge milkfish during her introduction to scuba diving, whilst the others headed up to island number 9 to explore Three Trees, plenty of turtles around today.Done with the Similan Islands Diving but not with the Similan National Park, we made our way to Koh Bon, where a manta ray was lovely enough to be waiting for us at the North Ridge! Happy divers back to the boat for snacks, then some snorkelling before the night dive, lots of bioluminescence along the ridge, cuttlefish and octopus out to play, and some hunting barracuda out for dinner - interesting to see on the dive, but probably not so much fun for the little unsuspecting rabbitfish!
We got up extra early to beat the crowds at Koh Bon again the next morning, diving deep along the West Ridge, gorgeous soft corals, more octopus and big schools of trevallies and snapper. The snorkellers chilled out in the bay watching a school of squid, some curious batfish, and crocodile needlefish swimming in the shallows.Onwards and upwards to Koh Tachai and we had the Pinnacle to ourselves, lucky us! Barracuda everywhere and only a tiny current so we had plenty of time to explore both of the pinnacles on the dive site. Koh Tachai above water for a couple of hours relaxation on solid ground, then a mellow dive along the North reef through the fusiliers and glassfish for out third dive of the day.
George turned out to be an excellent games master, and so taught us all some new games, which we then spent all evening playing! Dragged ourselves off to bed with promises to play again tomorrow, it's got to be an early morning the next day to get to Richelieu Rock before everyone else! Luck was again on our side, with great visibility and no-one else on the pinnacle, we had the rock to ourselves to explore and find all the cool stuff! Tigertail seahorses, pipefish, huge groupers and cuttlefish were just a few of the highlights of our 2 dives at Richelieu.
The wind was on our side, literally, so we put the sails up and cruised across to the Surin Islands for a dive at Aow Pakad - fun drift dive, and lots of cool critters to see - one of the nicest things about the dives in the Surins is that there's always something different about! This dive was no different, with juvenile emperor angelfish, massive harlequin sweetlips, catfish and mantis shrimps. The snorkellers got to see the sharks this time, and loads of clownfish in their anemones, and also had time to fit in a beach clean up, every little helps!Time for a bit more ultimate frisbee, had to drag an unwilling David to the beach, and he turned out to love it the most, we couldn't get him to leave! More games after dinner as we made our way back towards Koh Tachai, time to accuse your roommate as we played a new variation on Werewolf, Colin and Anneke turned out to be very good at double bluffing, whilst Grace just wanted to go on a mission! 'Just one more game before I go to bed' Libby kept saying...4 games of Resistance and 1 of Rabbit later...!
Up early for a sunrise dive on the Pinnacle, trevallies going crazy, and a little bit of a current got us nice and ready for breakfast when we got back to the boat! Sunbathing and chill out time on the sun deck (got to love those bean bags!), then time for our final dive at the Boonsung Wreck. Ridiculous amounts of fish all over the wreck, not the best visibility we've had so far this season, but there's so much to see it didn't really matter, huge schools of baby barracuda, and there were so many lionfish and pufferfish on this dive we stopped counting!Time for a final game of rabbits on the way back to Tap Lamu, set the timer on the camera for a group photo and time to say our goodbyes! Not long til we all meet again in the Happy Snapper later though :) Thanks to Roman & Rohan for the photos, and hope to see you all again in the Similans, or back on the Jaya in Komodo!
-Similan Diving
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